"But if you really loved me,—if you suffered as bitterly and severely as I do at the thoughts of my marrying another, you would be wretched as I am. What will console you for our separation?"
"My lord, I shall try to find solace in the discharge of my charitable duties,—duties I first learned to love and practise from your counsels and suggestions, and which have already afforded me so much consolation and sweet occupation."
"Hear me, I beseech you,—since you tell me it is right, I will marry this woman; but the sacrifice once accomplished, think not I will remain a single hour with her, or suffer her to behold my child; thus Fleur-de-Marie will lose in you the best and tenderest of mothers."
"But she will still retain the best and tenderest of fathers. By your marriage with the Countess Sarah she will be the legitimate daughter of one of Europe's sovereign princes, and, as you but just now observed, my lord, her position will be as great and splendid as it has been miserable and obscure."
"You are then pitilessly determined to shut out all hope from me? Unhappy being that I am!"
"Dare you style yourself unhappy,—you so good, so just, so elevated in rank, as well as in mind and feeling? Who so well and nobly understand the duty of self-denial and self-sacrifice? When but a short time since you bewailed your child's death with such heartfelt agony, had any one said to you, 'Utter the dearest wish of your soul and it shall be accomplished,' you would have cried, 'My child—my daughter! Restore her to me in life and health!' This unexpected blessing is granted you, your daughter is given to your longing arms, and yet you style yourself miserable! Ah, my lord, let not Fleur-de-Marie hear you, I beseech you!"
"You are right," said Rodolph, after a long silence, "such happiness as I aspired to would have been too much for this world, and far beyond my right even to dream of. Be satisfied your words have prevailed,—I will act according to my duty to my daughter, and forget the bleeding wound it inflicts on my own heart. But I am not sorry I hesitated in my resolution, since I owe to it a fresh proof of the perfection of your character."
"And is it not to you I owe the power of struggling with personal feelings and devoting myself to the good of others? Was it not you who raised and comforted my poor depressed mind, and encouraged me to look for comfort where only it could be found? To you, then, be all the merit of the little virtue I may now be practising, as well as all the good I may hereafter achieve. But take courage, my lord, bear up, as becomes one of your firm, right-minded nature. Directly Fleur-de-Marie is equal to the journey, remove her to Germany; once there, she will benefit so greatly by the grave tranquillity of the country that her mind and feelings will be soothed and calmed down to a placidity and gentle enjoyment of the present, while the past will seem but as a troubled dream."
"But you—you?"
"Ah, I may now confess with joy and pride that my love for you will be, as it were, a shield of defence from all snares and temptations,—a guardian angel that will preserve me from all that could assail me in body or mind. Then I shall write to you daily. Pardon me this weakness, 'tis the only one I shall allow myself; you, my lord, will also write to me occasionally, if but to give me intelligence of her whom once, at least, I called my daughter," said Clémence, melting into tears at the thoughts of all she was giving up, "and who will ever be fondly cherished in my heart as such; and when advancing years shall permit me fearlessly and openly to avow the regard which binds us to each other, then, my lord, I vow by your daughter that, if you desire it, I will establish myself in Germany, in the same city you yourself inhabit, never again to quit you, but so to end a life which might have been passed more agreeably, as far as our earthly feelings were concerned, but which shall, at least, have been spent in the practice of every noble and virtuous feeling."